Yes, this is my memory of Delta Hotels too. They were generally on par with Marriotts. The Delta Hotel in Victoria, BC is still a good example of what the product generally was, still has a club lounge and nicer IMO than the Marriott across the water.
It seems that Marriott is building a lot of new Deltas or rebranding new acquisitions as Deltas to be more mid range hotels. Kind of a more spartan AC. The pantry instead of a lounge can be handy, but the few we’ve seen are full of low quality packaged food items that we generally avoid.